Tuesday, April 07, 2009

For the preparation of a 'Matt's Chili of Variable Quality', you will need:

1 x Matt wearing an AWESOME T-Shirt.

1 x DAB Radio (Preferably one that won't cost too much to replace), tuned to a station of your Matt's choice. If this is not BBC 6Music[*] then your Matt is likely a pod-person and should be terminated. Don't waste though, pod-persons make excellent filler for a chili.

1 x Whatever onions and peppers your Matt has lying about the kitchen. In our example, 1 of the onions was a Tory, so was rotten to the core and the pepper unlikely to make it to the end of the chili-making process. A Matt's gotta eat, even when cooking. Oh and some mushed up dead cow (not in photo)

OK, seriously Matt, you need a real recipe for chili. I'll have to dig up a real one for you.

Also, if you can find them, get a can of roasted chipotle peppers to use in your chili. They are best pureed, but you can use them after a fine dice. Also, you should use two cans of crushed or pureed tomatoes to make the sauce, and brown the meat before frying the chilies or the onions (which are actually sauteed, but that's another matter). That way the meat flavors the onions and the spices instead of the other way around. Also, I like to add my beans much earlier before I put my sauce together because they will end up mostly flavorless if you add them too late.

@Jo I've advertised my lack of a proper texan chili recipe before but you have yet to come to my rescue shame on you! But this one is even less proper than normal and consisted of what I had lying around and was still yummy, so nerr!

I did use two cartons of chopped tomatoes and some tomatoe puree though - not sure I can get tins of chipotle but will look into it! Now get with the recipe delivery already (and where's my carrot cake cookies at?!)